Call for paper: Workplace learning and well-being

Workplace learning and well-being

The relationship between workplace learning and employee well-being is increasingly recognised as central to sustainable work and professional development. As organisations respond to digital transformation, hybrid work, and constant demands for competence renewal, learning has become both an essential resource and a potential source of pressure. While learning at work is often associated with productivity, engagement, and innovation, it can also lead to overload, stress, and work intensification. Understanding this complex interplay is vital for ensuring that learning enhances, rather than undermines, employees’ well-being.

This special issue of the Journal of Workplace Learning invites research that expands our understanding of well-being as it relates to learning in diverse workplace contexts, encompassing both formal learning programmes and informal, everyday learning practices. We welcome theoretical, conceptual, and empirical contributions that critically examine how learning processes influence well-being and how well-being, in turn, shapes learning capacity, competences, motivation, and engagement. By addressing this reciprocal relationship, the issue aims to move beyond the dominant assumption that learning is inherently positive and instead explore the conditions under which it supports flourishing rather than exhaustion.

A key contribution of this special issue lies in its focus on the contextual and collective dimensions of well-being. While much existing research has emphasised individual outcomes, we aim to foreground the relational, social, and cultural dynamics of workplace learning. This includes examining how shared learning practices, collaborative routines, and organisational cultures shape collective experiences of well-being. The issue also seeks to integrate perspectives across education, HRD, organisational studies, and psychology to build a holistic understanding of learning as a socially embedded process with consequences for both individuals and organisations.

The issue also invites methodological diversity and cross-sectoral comparison, covering both formal and informal learning contexts. Conceptual clarity regarding “well-being” and its relation to learning will be a key concern, as will critical reflection on how organisations can balance learning demands with employees’ capacity for recovery, creativity, and growth.

List of Topic Areas

Conceptual and theoretical integrations between workplace learning, organisational development, and employee well-being;
Mechanisms and conditions through which learning processes at work enhance or diminish individual and collective well-being;
Organisational and cultural contexts that shape how workplace learning practices influence well-being?;
Digital transformation and hybrid work, including the implications of AI and remote learning environments for well-being;
Equity, inclusion, and diversity in access to learning and in experiences of well-being across different employee groups;
Intergenerational and collaborative learning as drivers of social support, belonging, and shared professional growth;
Cross-sectoral and cross-cultural perspectives comparing how workplace learning-well-being dynamics unfold across industries, professions, and regions;
Methodological innovations for researching the complex and dynamic relationship
between learning and well-being.

Guest Editors

Ulrik Brandi, Aarhus University, Danish School of Education, Denmark, brandi@edu.au.dk

Kaija Collin, University of Jyväskylä, Department of Education, Finland, kaija.m.collin@jyu.fi

Submissions Information

Submissions are made using ScholarOne Manuscripts. Author guidelines must be strictly followed.

Submit via ScholarOne

Author Guidelines

Authors should select (from the drop-down menu) the special issue title at the appropriate step in the submission process, i.e. in response to “Please select the issue you are submitting to”.

Submitted articles must not have been previously published, nor should they be under consideration for publication anywhere else, while under review for this journal.